


Homesick

by momebie (katilara)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 17:31:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3777259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At twenty-two, Adam hasn't been back to Henrietta in two years. He convinces himself he doesn't miss it, until the day it comes looking for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homesick

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BadgerInMySoup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadgerInMySoup/gifts).



> [actualwizardbillykaplan](http://actualwizardbillykaplan.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr asked me to tell her about how a reunion between a broken up Adam and Ronan might go. This is a much longer and smuttier reply than I was initially intending to give. 
> 
> Feel free to come by [my tumblr](http://charmingpplincardigans.tumblr.com/) and say hi!

Adam looks up from his book of essays and at first he thinks he’s hallucinating, because this bookstore in this city is the very last place he expects to see Ronan Lynch. But there he is, staring back at Adam like doesn’t quite believe Adam is real either. Adam takes a breath and realizes, as the air floods his lungs, that he had stopped for a few seconds. It’s just like Ronan to show up out of nowhere and take that away from him. The asshole. 

“Hey,” he says, and it’s both too much and not enough. 

“Hey,” Ronan replies. There’s a pain blooming in the creases of his brow and after two years of not speaking Adam is surprised to find that it’s still his first instinct to smooth his fingers across it. 

Ronan is much the same as he had been-same sharp mouth and fierce gaze, tattoo still acting as a barbed wire warning around his very soul-but he’s also just a little taller and his shoulders are just a little broader. There’s a ruddy coloring to his skin that suggests he’s been working the Barns harder than Gansey has let on. Adam never asks after Ronan, it hurts him to even think about it, but Gansey and Blue always offer anyway. It’s very like the Ronan Adam left to throw himself into something in lieu of dealing with whatever is eating away at him. Adam wonders what it is he’s hiding from now and immediately pushes it down, because it’s not his place. It hasn’t been his place in a long time and Ronan doesn’t owe him, of all people, any explanations. 

“What are you doing here?” Adam hopes it sounds neutral, somewhere between the thrill of hope building in his throat and the accusation Ronan no doubt expects. 

“Matthew,” Ronan says. “But he can’t meet me until later, so I thought I’d kill some time.” 

Adam nods. “This is a good place for it. They don’t mind if you just sit at the bar and read.” 

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“A bit, yeah,” Adam says. He ducks his head, self-conscious of the confession. He still doesn’t use alcohol the way Ronan did, does still likely. He’s still wary of it, but he figures having survived to twenty-two means he gets to rewrite what it means to him to be a man and rebuild the world around himself so that he fits. 

“I will take that under advisement.” 

Ronan is being careful. Adam’s seen it in him so many times. That set of his shoulders, his crossed arms. Adam hasn’t been on this end of Ronan’s care in so long. Not since they had become a _them_. He feels like he’s standing on foreign soil. He doesn’t know what to say. There’s a lot that he wants to say, so many things he still tells himself that he’ll say to Ronan when he sees him again, but there’s nothing he has a right to say. The seconds stretch as they stand across the aisle of the bookstore from each other in silence, looking at shoulders and feet and the shelves around them. They let their eyes land anywhere but each other’s eyes, would rather do anything than acknowledge the mirrored, hesitant curiosity. 

“Well,” Adam says. “It was nice to see you.” 

At the same time, Ronan says, “Do you want to get a drink?”

“Yes,” Adam says, too fast and too eager, before he can talk himself out of it. 

Ronan raises an eyebrow. 

Adam holds the book up. “I’m just going to buy this, okay? I’ll come find you.” There are a few more awkward seconds before they head off in opposite directions, being careful not to brush in the close quarters. 

There’s a bit of a line and Adam uses the time to talk himself down from his nervous anxiousness. It’s just Ronan. There’s nothing for him to be afraid of. He knows more about Ronan than he probably knows about himself. But that’s the problem. Ronan had been everything and in a lot of ways he still is. Adam makes a quick decision, takes a deep breath, and rounds the corner into the small bar area. 

Ronan’s seated at a high top table and there’s a girl taking his drink order. Adam settles on the stool across from him and gives his own order without looking at the menu. When she walks away he trains his eyes on where Ronan’s hands are flat against the tabletop. They look roughed from work, but very much like Adam remembers them. He indulges in a moment of thinking about being touched by them a hundred different ways. 

“So,” Ronan says. 

“So,”Adam replies. 

“How are you?”

“Fine, and you?” 

“Fine.” Ronan gives it two beats before he laughs, soft and bitter. “This is bullshit.” 

“It is,” Adam says. The good thing about knowing Ronan Lynch is that you can always say exactly what you’re thinking, so Adam does. “But I don’t know who you want me to be.” 

“No one wants you to be anyone but who you are, Parrish. No one but you, anyway.” 

Their drinks arrive and Adam takes a slow sip of his. Ronan watches him do it like he’s documenting an endangered species. 

“You did,” Adam says. 

Ronan frowns. “I didn’t. I just didn’t understand why you had to be who you wanted to be some place so reprehensible.” He grimaces as if just being in the city makes him uncomfortable. And with Declan possibly around any corner, maybe it does. 

“I’m pretty sure people might actually kill for the opportunity I have here.”

“It’s not that far,” Ronan says into his glass. “We could have-”

“No,” Adam says. “I don’t want to be there. That hasn’t changed. I don’t want to go back there. It’s not home. It was always a place I wanted to escape. You knew that.” 

“I just thought-”

“What?” Adam knows he’s on the defensive, knows he’s explaining too much. He knows that Ronan knows all of this and they’ve had this argument before, but now that he’s started he can’t stop. “That you could convince me to stay? Hole up at the Barns and pretend it isn’t just down the road from that trailer and that courtroom and that church?”

“The whole of the world is always going to be just down the road from those places,” Ronan spits, and Adam is taken back by the bitter conviction in his voice. It’s clearly something he’s been thinking about, rehearsing. In a way, Adam’s glad he isn’t alone in that regard. “But no, I thought home didn’t have to be a place.” 

“Why? It’s always been a place for you.” It comes out with matching bitterness and Adam is surprised again, this time by how much he still resents Ronan his beautiful home and beautiful childhood, no matter what may have come after.

Ronan looks Adam in the eye and raises his chin. “No, it hasn’t.”

“I would never ask you to leave that place the way you asked me to stay in it.” 

“I was an idiot,” Ronan says. It’s next to the last thing Adam expects him to say. Succeeded only by, “Are you seeing anyone?”

“Not really, you?”

Ronan grins ruefully. “Does the man who brings the cattle feed count?”

“That depends,” Adam says. “Are you fucking him?” It’s something he would have said before, casual and wry, and it slips out much more easily than it should. 

It must surprise Ronan as well, because he laughs, real and open. Adam’s stomach turns over. “No, he’s like sixty, man.” 

“You never know how those daddy issues might manifest.” For the second it takes Ronan to answer Adam’s worried he’s gone too far, that he’s too out of practice, that Ronan’s wants and needs might actually have changed in the last two years. 

“I still prefer to drink my issues," Ronan says. Adam lets the worry go. 

“Nice,” he says. 

“It is if the whiskey is expensive enough.” Ronan pulls his phone out of his pocket and flips through the screens. He types into it, waits a moment, types a longer response. 

Adam drinks his beer and takes the opportunity of Ronan’s distraction to drink him in as well, more thoroughly than he’d been able to before. The slender boy Adam used to desire has grown into his lanky limbs and shoulders and hands, is now more muscle than bone. Adam feels homesick, wants to know how differently those new arms would feel around him. It’s not that he’s forgiven or forgotten the pride that drove them apart, but here, sitting across from his old friend in his new city, it feels like they could pretend it hadn’t happened. Or something. 

Ronan types into his phone some more and then slips it back into his pocket. He picks up his beer and drinks down half of what’s left in several deep gulps that Adam can still recognize as Ronan steeling himself. He puts the glass down and says, “I think my baby brother might be standing me up for the evening.” 

“You told him you were with me, didn’t you?” 

Matthew had been almost as upset as both Adam and Ronan when the break up happened. Every time Adam sees him Matthew asks if he’s single, tells him about what Ronan is doing. Adam still hasn’t outgrown being careful with Matthew and can never bring himself to ask him to stop. 

“Maybe.” This time when Ronan grins it’s full of teeth. “Hey Parrish, you wanna get out of here?”

“Lord yes,” Adam says. 

Ronan drops a twenty on the tabletop and hops out of his chair. Adam thinks it must mean that he’s grown when he doesn’t feel a need to argue. He had taken the Metro into the city, so Ronan drives them back to his apartment. His roommate is thankfully out when they get there, because she’s generally pretty cool, but Adam is positive she would not be interested in suffering through the way Ronan pins him against the front door as soon as it’s closed and kisses and kisses and kisses him. 

Ronan doesn’t even move to touch him. He leaves the palms of his hands pressed flat against the wood on either side of Adam’s shoulders and runs his tongue through Adam’s lips, hungrily re-learning his mouth. It’s Adam who advances things when he can’t take anymore. He feels like he’s going to fall out of his skin where’s it’s burning across his cheeks and neck and chest and belly and thighs. So he reaches up, slowly, and curls a hand around the back of Ronan’s neck. Ronan freezes. Adam uses the fingers of his other hand to smooth across Ronan’s forehead like he’d wanted to earlier and then ghosts them down his shoulder and side until he’s gripping Ronan’s hip. 

“I don’t,” Ronan starts. 

“I know,” Adam says, because they’ve had this conversation before too. Ronan doesn’t want to make Adam feel like he owes him anything, like he needs to go further than he wants. Just like before, Adam wants so much. He leans in and kisses Ronan’s mouth, more slowly this time. He takes a step forward, pushing Ronan back, and moves his lips to Ronan’s neck. Adam backs Ronan up until they’re leaning against the wall next to his bedroom door. He kicks his shoes off and Ronan follows suit. Then he reaches out, turns the knob and backs away, dragging Ronan through the open doorway and kicking it closed behind him. 

Once they’re safely in his room Adam tugs at Ronan’s shirt, pulling it up and over his head. As he pulls his own off Ronan moves his hands to unbutton Adam’s jeans and starts pushing them down with his boxers. Adam steps back to pull it all off and Ronan all but jumps out of his. He loses his balance trying to get his foot out of the pants leg and falls backward onto the bed. Adam steps onto the jeans so Ronan can pull free of them and then continues forward, straddling Ronan at the foot of the bed and pushing his shoulders until he’s flat on his back. In the graying light of the early evening Ronan looks sharp and unreal, like a dream Adam might forget later if he's not careful. 

Ronan smiles up at him. “I miss how bossy you are.”

“Shut up,” Adam says, obliging him. 

Ronan reaches up and grabs Adam around the chest, pulling him down until they’re laying flat together and then flips them over so he’s on top. His arms are as strong and sure as Adam thought they probably were, the muscles in his biceps and chest are broad and firm and the muscles in his back move taut under Adam’s fingers. Adam feels like they must both be very different people than they had been, but there’s nothing different about this. Ronan still knows where to bite at Adam’s jaw and which nipple is the most sensitive and how much Adam loves it when he lightly drags his nails down his sides and thighs. He has his mouth around Adam’s cock in no time and Adam moans and lightly runs his fingers over the still familiar shape of Ronan’s head. 

Ronan pulls off and kisses his way back up Adam’s body. He’s beautiful in the way that he’s wrecked, lips swollen and red, flush working across his face and neck, his chest heaving with his rapid breath. Adam feels like an idiot to have ever given this up. “Do you have supplies?” 

Adam nods and pushes himself up on his elbows. He rolls over and digs through the drawer in his nightstand and comes back with lube and condoms. Ronan snatches them from his hands. Adam tries to turn onto his stomach, but Ronan places a firm hand against his hip and shakes his head, pushes him onto his back again. 

“Please,” he says, unwrapping the condom. 

The way Ronan says it sends a tear singing through Adam’s heart, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it before Ronan has the condom on him and is applying the lube to himself and _fuck_ , if this isn’t a sight that still undoes him entirely. He doesn’t have time to dwell on that either, because it’s not long before Ronan is tight around him and he loses the ability to critically analyze his feelings entirely. 

Ronan leans forward with his hands pressing into the mattress on either side of Adam’s waist. They’re still except for the steady rise and fall of their chests as they breathe heavily into the space between them. There’s a magic building there that Adam has felt out of touch with since he left Henrietta in his rearview mirror and it is overwhelming in its comfort. It’s not that his sexual encounters since Ronan have been bad. Objectively they’ve probably been in a steady upswing as he learns more about himself and how bodies work in general. It’s just that Ronan is home in a way Henrietta wasn’t and he feels something in him balance out. Ronan rocks his hips, sliding up slowly and coming down again. He clenches his teeth and let’s out a soft grunt as he does it. 

Adam had forgotten this, or more accurately, had paved it over with his pride and old slights so he wouldn’t have to miss it. This trembling, halting certainty, this lowering of the mask, is stunning on Ronan. He pulls them into a steady rhythm, both of them moaning quietly and saying so much more this way than they ever would have been able to in the bar. Adam digs the fingers of one hand into Ronan’s hip and wraps the other around Ronan’s cock, stroking in time with the thrust of his hips to meet Ronan’s movements. Ronan leans away, sits up straight over him, and let’s his head fall back. The pale column of his throat is bared and Adam wants to bite it and mark him. He settles for stroking faster. 

Ronan’s moans are louder now and coming more rapidly. Adam can feel himself reaching his climax, but he refuses to surrender to it first. “I. I, oh god,” Ronan stutters, and then he comes across Adam’s stomach and chest. Ronan stills for a moment, catching his breath, and Adam cants his hips up harder. He can’t stop, can’t let him enjoy this yet. He’s close, so close. Ronan moves with him and brings him over the edge. 

Adam cries out, gasps for a breath, and stills. He lets go of Ronan and brings his hands up over his head so that they’re resting against his pillows, fingers gently curling and uncurling in time to the ebb of orgasm. Ronan slides off of him and collapses onto his back next to him on the bed. Adam rolls over and pushes himself onto his knees so he can dispose of the condom and wipe up the cum spattered across his skin with a tissue, then he collapses next to Ronan again. He places his hand palm up in the space between them. Ronan grabs it and laces their fingers together. 

“Why don’t you come home?” he says. “Just to visit?”

Adam squeezes Ronan’s fingers in apology. “Too painful.” 

“There’s more there than just them, you know. We did a lot of living after them. Our whole lives are there. You’re there even though you’re not, around every corner.” 

“I know, it’s not just them,” Adam says. 

Ronan pulls his hand away and rolls onto his side, propping his head in his cupped palm and studying Adam. “Why, Parrish, do you miss me?”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Of course I miss you. You were the first person I ever truly loved who loved me back.” 

“First?” There’s a tinge of hurt in his voice that Adam wishes he could absorb and keep for his own. 

“You may have kept me above a church, but I did not join the cloisters.” 

“No one could have kept you anywhere you didn’t want to be.” 

“I like to think that’s true,” Adam says. “But I didn’t know that then and there was only one way for me to find out.” 

“It’s still true." 

“Maybe.” 

Ronan is quiet for a long while. The front door opens and closes and they hear his roommate come in, run the water in the kitchen sink, and then hum her way to her bedroom before closing the door. After another few minutes Ronan says, “Do you still?”

“Still what?”

Ronan doesn't answer, possibly unable to say it out loud. He just looks at Adam, contemplation caught in the corners of his mouth.

Adam thinks. Does he still love Ronan? Of course he does. He loves him in a way that’s terrifying, in a way that he would gladly let eat him whole, in a way that it had eaten him whole at one time. “Yes.”

Ronan exhales. “Good, me too. I tried to stop but I just...can’t.”

“I don’t want you to,” Adam says. “I feel like a better person when you do.”

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know.” Adam doesn’t know. He’s still not going to move back to Henrietta, and he still doesn’t feel comfortable driving there every weekend. But the Barns might not be so bad every other weekend or so. He thinks he’s probably been kidding himself the last couple of years thinking he could make a clean break and move on. Ronan is as much a part of him as Cabeswater still is. He doesn’t hear from it regularly anymore, but he can still feel it there, thrumming through him. “I think maybe we just take it one breath at a time and see what happens.” 

“I better make the next few count then,” Ronan says. He leans over and places his hand flat against Adam’s stomach. Then he kisses and kisses and kisses him like a drowning man coming up for air.


End file.
